World Trade Organization approves new site full of “pirated” material from US

America's ongoing dispute with Antigua and Barbuda created bizarre situation.

The United States government has been known to respond rather aggressively toward individuals and foreign entities it believes are violating American intellectual property law. (Ask Kim Dotcom.) But relatively few countries have responded by seeking (and receiving) international authorization to directly, openly flaunt American copyright.

On Monday, the World Trade Organization granted the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda the ability to suspend “certain concessions and obligations it has under international law to the United States in respect of intellectual property rights,” as the result of an ongoing dispute between Washington and Saint John’s. In other words, Antigua and Barbuda will now be allowed to open up its own internationally blessed“pirate” site, undoubtedly full of American films, TV shows, music, and software.

The roots of this disagreement, like many feuds, center on money. The 81,000-person nation has long argued it should be allowed to use its offshore gambling sites to compete in the United States, where gambling is highly regulated. In a statement released Monday, the tiny country’s finance minister said Antigua and Barbuda’s economy has been “devastated” as a result of American action.

The country claims the sector once employed more than 4,000 people (around five percent of the entire country) and has since fallen to 500. Proceeds from the industry “helped fund public education, healthcare, and the country’s infrastructure, and the income boosted consumer spending and other economic activity associated with a vibrant, high-tech industry.”

“These aggressive efforts to shut down the remote gaming industry in Antigua have resulted in the loss of thousands of good paying jobs and seizure by the Americans of billions of dollars belonging to gaming operators and their customers in financial institutions across the world,” said Harold Lovell, Antigua’s Finance Minister, in a statement.

They just wanted to let us play the ponies!

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, Antigua and Barbuda has been promoting itself as an off-shore gambling haven. By 2003, Antigua and Barbuda began proceedings at the World Trade Organization against the United States, arguing “the cumulative impact of the US measures is to prevent the supply of gambling and betting services from another WTO Member to the United States on a cross-border basis.”

The nation was further enraged when Washington prevented Americans from engaging in online gambling with offshore sites, including those based in the Caribbean state, under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The two countries have been duking it out at the WTO ever since. In 2005, the WTO ruled that an American law that only let domestic companies provide online horse-racing gambling sites to the US market discriminated against foreign companies.

When Washington did not change domestic law as a result, as Reuters reports, “the WTO in 2007 gave Antigua the right to retaliate by waiving intellectual property rights protections on some $21 million worth of US goods annually, a fraction of the $3.44 billion the island country requested. Typically, the WTO authorizes countries to retaliate by raising tariffs. But in Antigua's case it decided the country was too small for that step to be an effective tool to persuade the United States to change its law.”

Needless to say, Washington isn’t taking this lying down.

"The United States has urged Antigua to consider solutions that would benefit its broader economy,” Nkenge Harmon, a spokeswoman for the US Trade Representative's office, told Reuters. “However, Antigua has repeatedly stymied these negotiations with certain unrealistic demands.”

How much you want to bet, we have to "invade" Antigua to stop the terrorists?

I'd give good odds on that, if you weren't already in the poor house in large part due to your last two "invasions."

Given the USA's history of running to the WTO when it's convenient and ignoring the organization when it's not, it should be interesting to see where this goes. It's certainly high-visibility, as far as WTO sanctions go.

“However, Antigua has repeatedly stymied these negotiations with certain unrealistic demands.”I'm sure those "unrealistic demands" were completely absurd - like "let Americans voluntarily _choose_ whether or not to spend money on the services we provide."

How much you want to bet, we have to "invade" Antigua to stop the terrorists?

I'd give good odds on that, if you weren't already in the poor house in large part due to your last two "invasions."

Given the USA's history of running to the WTO when it's convenient and ignoring the organization when it's not, it should be interesting to see where this goes. It's certainly high-visibility, as far as WTO sanctions go.

Given EVERY country's history of running to the WTO when it's convenient and ignoring the organization when it's not...

What are the odds that Kim Dotcom is now looking for data center space in Antigua...

lol. Can you imagine the entire Antigua island turning into a giant data center with Dotcom sitting in its core and most of the population turning into technicians, security officer and misc personnel?

Did you hear that?. Is the sound of Titanium Dragon having a heart attack.

It's funny because copyright, patent and trademark infringement of materials from specifically US is perfectly legal as far as Antigua is concerned now. I don't think WTO gave Antigua carte blanche to ignore IP laws of the entire world (that it/WTO has trade agreements with); just US.

It's funny because copyright, patent and trademark infringement of materials from specifically US is perfectly legal as far as Antigua is concerned now. I don't think WTO gave Antigua carte blanche to ignore IP laws of the entire world (that it/WTO has trade agreements with); just US.

As I said, this is a weird, WEIRD situation.

Yeah, this is going to be ugly. And weird. And possibly result in really bad things, because many of these companies have patents and copyrights in numerous countries, not just the US, making for some really weird and ugly lawsuits.

We'll see how it goes. The US has far more resources to win this than they do. The US could probably prevent them from even being accessible if they really cared to. I dunno that they will though.

The real problem with the WTO ruling though is that it damages self-regulation. I know some of you are applauding this, but will you be clapping your hands when US gun manufacturers claim that European countries with bans on firearm sales are crippling their sales via extreme regulations? Because lest we forget, the US laws on this subject matter were intended to cripple ALL online gambling, both foreign and domestic, that occurs with US citizens. This is precisely analogous to gun bans.

I'm not sure all of you will be so happy if the US turns the tables here.

It would be remarkably clever of them to do so; sadly, I doubt Obama would. It would be hilarious to see the reaction in Europe though; I suspect this would get clamped down on rather quickly if it happened.

I will note that situations like this are exactly why some people hate the WTO (I am not really one of them) - it damages the sovereignty of countries.

It's funny because copyright, patent and trademark infringement of materials from specifically US is perfectly legal as far as Antigua is concerned now. I don't think WTO gave Antigua carte blanche to ignore IP laws of the entire world (that it/WTO has trade agreements with); just US.

As I said, this is a weird, WEIRD situation.

Yeah, this is going to be ugly. And weird. And possibly result in really bad things, because many of these companies have patents and copyrights in numerous countries, not just the US, making for some really weird and ugly lawsuits.

We'll see how it goes. The US has far more resources to win this than they do. The US could probably prevent them from even being accessible if they really cared to. I dunno that they will though.

The real problem with the WTO ruling though is that it damages self-regulation. I know some of you are applauding this, but will you be clapping your hands when US gun manufacturers claim that European countries with bans on firearm sales are crippling their sales via extreme regulations? Because lest we forget, the US laws on this subject matter were intended to cripple ALL online gambling, both foreign and domestic, that occurs with US citizens. This is precisely analogous to gun bans.

I'm not sure all of you will be so happy if the US turns the tables here.

It would be remarkably clever of them to do so; sadly, I doubt Obama would. It would be hilarious to see the reaction in Europe though; I suspect this would get clamped down on rather quickly if it happened.

I'm not too sure how far they can turn the table though. This is a pretty public and blatant warning from WTO. The fact that WTO felt the need to go this far implies something is going on.

Titanium Dragon, this went before the WTO because the US broke a free-trade agreement it had with Antigua and Barbuda when it changed its gambling laws. Not just because it made online gambling illegal.

I'm not too sure how far they can turn the table though. This is a pretty public and blatant warning from WTO. The fact that WTO felt the need to go this far implies something is going on.

They can't turn the table on them; the country has nothing of value, which is why the situation is so assymetric. They're angry because the US has clamped down on gambling so heavily, and the country, fundamentally, has nothing of value there - they are pretty much entirely dependent on US money because no one needs to trade with them for any reason, and their position in the middle of the ocean makes them a terrible place to source any sort of real industry.

The trick, in this case, would be the US claiming on the same basis as them that other countries (say, European ones) were suppressing the gun trade from another WTO member unfairly - the situation is fairly analogous, because the US's laws on gambling don't have the purpose of being protectionist but the purpose of simply barring it altogether (its very difficult to gamble in most of the country). The goal would be to attack the provisions that were being used in this respect to attack US sovereignty.

Though of course, the real solution would be just to say "screw it" and legalize, and heavily regulate, gambling and tax it fairly heavily, and make that tax be the same whether the site is foreign or domestic (thereby preventing any potential accusations of assymmetry). But if they were that smart they would have done it already.

I'm really not a huge fan of gambling in general (I am fairly sympathetic to the notion that it harms poor people and people with poor impulse control, and it serves no useful purpose) but honestly, the truth is that its probably more trouble than it is worth.

Of course, we could just impose some sort of cap on the amount you can gamble on any given day, but that would require fairly complex enforcement regimens.

Quote:

Titanium Dragon, this went before the WTO because the US broke a free-trade agreement it had with Antigua and Barbuda when it changed its gambling laws. Not just because it made online gambling illegal.

I understand why they are irate. Its a perfectly understandable concern. The country has nothing of value (as I pointed out above) so is pretty dependent on the (relatively rich) Americans spending money there, and the only thing they have is entertainment of various forms, including gambling (something which the US has been clamping down on over the years).

The issue, from a US standpoint, is that these laws exist not to be protectionist but to prevent the activity as much as possible (though I'm sure the reps from Nevada and Atlantic City probably fight as hard as they can against gambling to be protectionist, those few people are insufficient to pass such laws - there is broad anti-gambling sentiment in Congress, and indeed in the US, though of course many people like gambling).

Hipocracy at its best. This is the beginning of a chain reaction for all those copyright trolls.

I am guessing once The MPAA and the RIAA douche bags get wind of this, they will do all the can to convince our military to nuke that country. That is unlikely to happen. If we do anything to that tiny country we will look like a bully for real, not like we don't already look like a bully country.

On the other hand we have a lot of people in trouble for this and this could be the beginning of the end for the copyright trolls.

Hipocracy at its best. This is the beginning of a chain reaction for all those copyright trolls.

I am guessing once The MPAA and the RIAA douche bags get wind of this, they will do all the can to convince our military to nuke that country. That is unlikely to happen. If we do anything to that tiny country we will look like a bully for real, not like we don't already look like a bully country.

On the other hand we have a lot of people in trouble for this and this could be the beginning of the end for the copyright trolls.

MPAA and RIAA probably couldn't care less until somebody sets up file locker service there. We are talking about a tiny island nation with equally tiny population.

Hipocracy at its best. This is the beginning of a chain reaction for all those copyright trolls.

I am guessing once The MPAA and the RIAA douche bags get wind of this, they will do all the can to convince our military to nuke that country. That is unlikely to happen. If we do anything to that tiny country we will look like a bully for real, not like we don't already look like a bully country.

On the other hand we have a lot of people in trouble for this and this could be the beginning of the end for the copyright trolls.

This has nothing to do with the MPAA or RIAA. This is a trade dispute between the two countries over the US's extremely restrictive laws on gambling. The reason that they're attacking copyright is because they literally have nothing of value there.

It may be a small country, but there is a lot of money to be made of running piracy sites. Mega upload is not officially a piracy site, but the site made millions, if not billions in its time of operation. From what this article and the link you posted seem to be saying is, the USA gave this country its blessing to distribute all the pirated goods it wants via internet. That should worth more than gambling. The question is;"For how long? Advertising revenue alone can draw in a fortune.

The copyright trolls, and all you guys think because its a small country it can't do much. Server farms don't need the whole land mass to be of high traffic for this type of operation. Ebay was founded in a garage for example. There is lots of potential here and more than enough land to host many thousands of piracy websites. That is until the US decides to lock up the operators/ founders of any said site that is participating in said activities.

The Pirate bay, the original mega upload.com could be hosted there and several other sites in trouble, unless I am getting all this wrong.

This has nothing to do with the MPAA or RIAA. This is a trade dispute between the two countries over the US's extremely restrictive laws on gambling. The reason that they're attacking copyright is because they literally have nothing of value there.

What do you think their reaction to this is going to be? It's going to be very public, and very pro-copyright. I expect very anti-WTO as well, and along the lines of "they dont have teh authoritah!"

THEN they will go running to their nearest paid politician, and scream at them until they do something about it.